Creating Custom Web Searches in Alfred

Searching is one of the most technically complicated processes to build and yet the simplest to use. And it’s almost universally accepted that every website has a way to search the entirety of their content. Connect this with the ability to search websites directly from Alfred and you can create a one-stop shop for searching all your favorite sites.

Alfred can do searches in Google and many other websites out-of-the-box. But if you notice yourself searching a specific website repeatedly, it makes sense to set up a custom search within Alfred. If you continually repeat this process, you’ll end up using Alfred for all your searches instead of going through the multiple steps required to open a site, find the search bar, and type your query.

To set up a new custom search, you first need to know how the site handles search queries from a URL standpoint. For joebuhlig.com, this is what that looks like:

http://joebuhlig.com/search/?q=

Once you have that information, open Alfred preferences, go to Features, then Web Search. At the bottom-right you’ll see “Add Custom Search.” From there, simply fill out the details you want for the search. Here’s the full example for this site:

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